Activity Group meeting gave members the EC updates on the digital decade, data spaces, skills and more

The fiftieth BDVA Activity Group meeting took place on Wednesday 21st of September in Brussels. The meeting gathered 50+ members together, for the first time in 2 years again on site. Therefore, BDVA decided to invite several European Commission officials and focus the meeting on the EU strategies and policies for digitalisation and data.

During the morning plenary, DG CNECT officials presented the Digital Decade Strategy, its targets for 2030 and the new instrument of multi-country projects. The Futurium platform was also presented as an engagement tool for the BDVA community to have their say and contribute to the EU policies. The following session provided an overview of recent developments of the digital innovation hubs and introduced EUHubs4Data and BDVA i-Spaces as key instruments to support the Commission's work on them.

The last session of the morning connected the LeADS project and BDVA Task Force 9 (Skills) to the Digital Europe Programme's (DEP) objectives set for digital skills development. It also served as the first introduction to a new call for proposal by the European Commission dedicated to Advanced Digital Skills, for which BDVA will host a brokering event on October 25th.

After the networking lunch, the main session of the afternoon focused on the Data Strategy implementation. DG CNECT representatives gave an update on the overall status of and Data Spaces projects of Horizon Europe and DEP, providing foresight to 2023-2024 calls. Following the presentation, the BDVA Task Force 10 (Data Spaces) leads and KU Leuven representatives, introduced the upcoming key Data Spaces projects and initiatives and the BDVA participation in them. The newly funded Horizon Europe projects UNLOCK CEI, WATERVERSE, AgriDataSpace, GREAT and enRichMyData also presented their scope and upcoming work in the implementation of data sharing spaces.

AG50 meeting had pitches from members in both, the morning and afternoon plenary. The pitches were given by NEC Laboratories Europe, ITI, CERTH, Oxys Consulting, Terrasigna, Sofia University, Politecnico di Milano, SingularLogic, Demos Helsinki and Insight Centre. The day was finished by BDVA President Thomas Hahn's (Siemens) updates on BDVA activities on the topic of trustworthy industrial AI.

We thank all the members and the Commission for joining and for their contributions! The members will be informed about the time and place of the next Activity Group meeting. You can find all the presentations on the BDVA intranet (for members only).

About Activity Group meetings

Activity Group meetings are events for BDVA members to get all the latest updates on the association's activities, strategic developments and opportunities.  In each AG meeting, we invite the members to pitch, and the events include informative sessions from the European policy-makers, collaborators and other key stakeholders.

Do you have feedback or questions regarding the Activity Group meetings? Do not hesitate to contact us at info@core.bdva.eu!